Have the chinese got it right?

Rev Hellfire

I'm curious as to what the good citizens of the forum think about the idea of state sanctioned religion as per the management of religion in an atheist state like china.

Assuming that religions are not going to go away at any time in the near future (of which there is little evidence) and working on the premise that they are indeed primarily a destructive force should society not attempt to commandeer these institutions to ensure they work solely for the better meant of society and not for their own self interest?

Surely a pragmatic society would recognise that a certain strand of society needs and will embrace religions regardless of the undoubted fine education and instruction they recieve, better then to accept the fact and provide an ‘official’ outlet for such needs ?

seamus

Any attempt to control, licence or otherwise sanction a religion will make its userbase stronger.

I would prefer to let them eat themselves. Treat them as legal institutions, tax them as such and provide them with no legal/taxation recognition or benefits that any other corporation doesn't get. People's right to choose their religion must be protected. The religions themselves don't deserve any state protection.

Whispered

seamus wrote: »

. People's right to choose their religion must be protected. The religions themselves don't deserve any state protection.

+1

Just a small pull off topic, (sorry) is there any other reason for pubs to be closed tomorrow besides the fact it's a christian holy day??

Red Hand

Well, didn't Shinto fulfil such a purpose during Japan's wars upto and including the Second world war?

I don't see the purpose. Why have my taxes go to a government who are using them (and think-tanks/spin doctors/HSE type bureucrats which all need vast quantities of money) to get me to believe in something that I think foolish?

Rev Hellfire

But surely if you 'license' religions to operate within your territory you can control what they disseminate to the public at large ensuring it is compatible with society as a whole.

You're not dictating what religions people can follow, but rather controlling and curtailing the worse excesses of religion. Would society be better off if for example sanctioned Christian’s churches promoted equal rights for homosexuals for example?

You’ll not curtail the more extreme followers they’ll still do their own thing (much as they do now) but you’ll influence the majority for the better.

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

I don't see the purpose. Why have my taxes go to a government who are using them (and think-tanks/spin doctors/HSE type bureucrats which all need vast quantities of money) to get me to believe in something that I think foolish?

You're not been told to believe something, rather organised religions have to be acceptable to operate.

Dades

seamus wrote: »

Any attempt to control, licence or otherwise sanction a religion will make its userbase stronger.

I would prefer to let them eat themselves. Treat them as legal institutions, tax them as such and provide them with no legal/taxation recognition or benefits that any other corporation doesn't get. People's right to choose their religion must be protected. The religions themselves don't deserve any state protection.

+1

Personal beliefs can't be controlled, and should not be. Institutions who promote them can and should.

Rev Hellfire

Dades wrote: »

+1

Personal beliefs can't be controlled, and should not be. Institutions who promote them can and should.

Which is exactly what the chinese do.

robindch

That's an interesting question and in my opinion, there's far less trouble is caused by small numbers of unrestrained religious people who need a religion to restrain them, than the much larger amount of misery and time-wasting that results from the activities of large numbers of ordinary people who have been made religious.

BTW, the Chinese government is not controlling religion in order to limit the damage done by religious believers at an individual level, but rather controlling it in order to limit the political power of organizations which it does not control. That's why the underground church movement is perceived as a threat, and eliciting such a violent response. The Chinese government has presumably studied the effects of non-state-controlled religions in other countries and has drawn its conclusions.

Harnessing churches to work outside their self-interest is a good idea, but as religions exist essentially purely for their own self-interest to start with, I suspect you're onto a loser here.

For example, as a religious person with a few hours to donate would you prefer to spend it inside a warm dance-hall with plenty of young people around, an attached cafe and free wireless, or out in some decrepit part of town, cleaning junk out of the gutters?

No contest, really!

seamus

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

But surely if you 'license' religions to operate within your territory you can control what they disseminate to the public at large ensuring it is compatible with society as a whole.

You're not dictating what religions people can follow, but rather controlling and curtailing the worse excesses of religion. Would society be better off if for example sanctioned Christian’s churches promoted equal rights for homosexuals for example?

You’ll not curtail the more extreme followers they’ll still do their own thing (much as they do now) but you’ll influence the majority for the better.


You're not been told to believe something, rather organised religions have to be acceptable to operate.

Who decides what's "acceptable"? The very notion of freedom of religion is freedom of belief. If you tell a religion that it may only teach certain things then you are directly attempting to tell people what they can and cannot believe.

The state has to rely on its own education to tell people what constitutes an "acceptable" belief. If schooling was entirely secular then there would be no need to prevent the Cathlolics from teaching the evils of homosexuality. Anyone with half a brain would realise how misguided the teaching is.

Dades

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

Which is exactly what the chinese do.

There are degrees of control. The Chinese model is not a good one.

PDN

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

You’ll not curtail the more extreme followers they’ll still do their own thing (much as they do now) but you’ll influence the majority for the better.

The Chinese experience is that, if you try to control the majority, then they don't stay the majority for long. The Three Self Patriotic Movement (State censored and controlled churches) comprised, when it was set up, the majority of professing Christians in China. That is no longer so since the underground Church is much more attractive to people than the State-controlled Quislings.

I have seen the same thing in countries that were part of the former Soviet Union sphere of influence. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, have grown dramatically because they are viewed as heroes for resisting the Communist regime and refusing to accept Government control or restrictions.

Red Hand

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

You're not been told to believe something, rather organised religions have to be acceptable to operate.

So their belief systems have to be acceptable to operate thus ensuring that people believe within the acceptable government imposed control limits?

lostexpectation

no

Rev Hellfire

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

So their belief systems have to be acceptable to operate thus ensuring that people believe within the acceptable government imposed control limits?

Yes, this by the way can be a good thing. Ours laws are in effect a codified list of acceptable behaviours to which members of our society are required to conform too.

I see no reason why organised religious institutions should be exempt from this on the grounds of ‘religious freedoms’.

I accept robins point that the Chinese government has set such structures in place to protect the status quo, but it is this sort of religious interference which he also rails against in our society as well.

I'm curious how those opposed to such an idea would attempt to counteract the influence of religions beyond hoping that they will just go away? Surely they need to be actively checked.

Hivemind187

Surely any form of outright supression such as the communist system of limited, approved religious worship only serves to reinforce the ties between those persons.

For Jews during the Holocaust (to use an example everyone should be familiar with) the persecution of them for their religious practices (and perceived racial qualities) made many moderate or even lapsed Jews into hard-core believers, simply by the virtue that it connected them to other people.

We are seeing the same thing in China today, where the underground Christian movement is being uprooted and destroyed wherever it is found. This isnt serving to diminish the power that such a group has, rather the group is feeding from this to reinforce it's convictions.

I dont think the Chinese method is a good one (obviously) but then their motives and methods of control are a little unsavory. Perhaps if they did not use such violent measures against religious political bases like christianity, some forms of buddhism, falun gong and the on going nonsense in Tibet with the Dalai Lama and instead taxed the hell out of them, forced them to to be accountable and viewed everything they did from a default position of quiet and perhaps even polite contempt for superstition they would be suceeding far better.

On the other hand, that hasnt worked for us either.

robindch

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

I accept robins point that the Chinese government has set such structures in place to protect the status quo, but it is this sort of religious interference which he also rails against in our society as well.

The Chinese government controls the church so that people who want to exercise religion have a state-controlled outlet available to them. One in which the religious can freely exercise as much of their religious needs as the state will allow, without risking the kind of church-state war that broke out in Nicaragua, or from the religious the developing the kind of crude, mob-level political power that right-wing christians developed in the USA.

The position is easy enough to understand from the Party's point of view, but that does not mean that I condone it. Any more than I condone the Irish government's detestably deferential attitude towards the semi-official religion in this country.

But as hivemind says, the chinese government is playing a dangerous game, since so much religion plays on feelings of group persecution and the grand nobility of gory self-sacrifice.

Hence, I can't help but feel that it's making the situation worse with its current policy. Perhaps they should open up the religious marketplace and trust in good education and a rising economy to deal with religion before it becomes a threat to stability. But as a skeptical wessie capitalist, I suppose I'd be expected to say that.

Hero Of College

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

I'm curious as to what the good citizens of the forum think about the idea of state sanctioned religion as per the management of religion in an atheist state like china.

Assuming that religions are not going to go away at any time in the near future (of which there is little evidence) and working on the premise that they are indeed primarily a destructive force should society not attempt to commandeer these institutions to ensure they work solely for the better meant of society and not for their own self interest?

Surely a pragmatic society would recognise that a certain strand of society needs and will embrace religions regardless of the undoubted fine education and instruction they recieve, better then to accept the fact and provide an ‘official’ outlet for such needs ?

You mean, like legalised heroin or something????

Can you see 10 Downing Street administering Islam in England???

Bertie is already in schtuck to the Church for running the Primary Schools. Suppose they were to piss off in the morning, do you see Liz O Donnell pulling double shifts down at the local primary school.

Administering these people is easier said than done. In the USA, the government has its chubby mitts in EVERY pie going...except the GOD game. The US Revenue, FBI, CIA...you name it, have powers to beat they band..and can't touch the Religions. WACO, Rev Jones, you name it.

Ireland isn't China. Its not a Totalitarian state. And its not the USA.

Can't see it.

lostexpectation

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

I'm curious as to what the good citizens of the forum think about the idea of state sanctioned religion as per the management of religion in an atheist state like china.

Assuming that religions are not going to go away at any time in the near future (of which there is little evidence) and working on the premise that they are indeed primarily a destructive force should society not attempt to commandeer these institutions to ensure they work solely for the better meant of society and not for their own self interest?

Surely a pragmatic society would recognise that a certain strand of society needs and will embrace religions regardless of the undoubted fine education and instruction they recieve, better then to accept the fact and provide an ‘official’ outlet for such needs ?

did this not happen here to certain extent, im not if the church sanctioned the official gov or the gov sanction the official church.